A sense of Synecdoche New York

Early on in the film a page is opened and the overture to Proust’s In Search of Lost Time is seen. Kaufmann’s own work is a messy, knotty, bracing reworking of Proustian space. There are no magical madeleines here with coherently conjured up visions. There is only memory that is at once schizoid and anarchic. And it is ultimately a film about ‘impossibility’. The impossibility of love, of art, of aging, even of death. Then there is the saddest truth of this film — the impossibility of loneliness.

In Proust the self is constructed every single day to re-configure the always lost paradise. There are circles here, returns and beginnings anew. The self is the daily compromise memory allows. But the search is rather charming, always a little romantic, even perhaps a little fabular. The ‘play’ of/in the world never quite defeats the quester even if there is finally a quasi-spiritual sense of repose. Proust is a bit like Cervantes but Don Quixote ends somewhere; In Search of Lost Time always loops in on its finales.

In Kaufmann’s work however the time of life is only purgatorial, suspended between prologue and epilogue, always too late for the first and always too early for the second. It is perhaps simply a film about ghosts and their impossible presence. The only life here is one where shards of memory stand in for the ever elusive ‘whole’ of life. A work of art in effect always constructed in the mind like a stage set with movable props and changable characters. Life will have been a hallucination…

It is not a young person’s film. It’s lessons are too costly. But then youth, just like age, is not granted to everyone.

Excellent stab at this Kaleem. It’s one of the most difficult films of recent years, and I guess we can say any attempt at decoding its message is a big plus, but you’ve gone above and beyond with this Proustian treatment.

………..Mr. Hasan, I am not sure I fully understand everything you are saying in this short piece, but I do buy into the idea that this may well be a film about “ghosts and their impossible presence.”……….

1)Just because you are unable to fully comprehend a piece of writing (and I have noted a general hostility in you towards what you consider ‘intellectual’ writing) does not at all mean that the writing is not worthwhile. As readers we are not equally equipped to read all kinds of writing, depending our our training and so forth. But it is upto us to try and read more carefully and whatever this might entail. We cannot demand that a writing piece be completely clear to us. Of course different people would have different standards for what is comprehensible anyway.

2)This short piece in any case does not claim to be a ‘review’.

3)If the piece annoys you because it does not conform to your expectations of what a piece on cinema should be (assuming you find it completely clear) this also is not a fault with the writing. I know we have certain traditional expectations in this sense but this is again a bias we should try and get over as opposed to ‘policing’ writing based on our predilections.

In general greater exposure to all kinds of writing makes one less rigid in terms of one’s expectations.

Russell: I think the director presents us with a life that is messy in every sense (love, marriage, children, health, aging, art). But it is also the life of ‘everyman’. Because all of our lives are a little like that of the protagonist. At the same time there is ‘art’ which is what makes life possible. Or at least palatable. Nietzsche famously said “we need art lest we should perish of the truth.” So the protagonist is engaged in a magnificent theatrical project which ‘doubles’ everything in his life and he starts living life through this work of art. But this too is a kind of ‘impossible’ engagement since no one could live a life of pure art. There would always be the messiness to return to. We don’t attain love, we idealize love and we find in our lives only pale reflections. We are so dependent in every sense on our bodies being healthy that changes of disease and so forth alter our loves completely. We cherish art and yet art is what makes the rest even more ‘impossible’ to live through. And then there is death. What we can never really wait for (since it is something that lies beyond the domain of experience) and yet we are somehow always heading towards it. But perhaps the more originary art takes place in the mind in the dialectic between time and memory. All of life then becomes a contest with this dynamic. These relations are all ‘synecdochal’.

Ok Kaleem, the gloves are off. Let’s have our own little fight club :)

Your hubris is breathtaking, and rather than make an effort to explain your piece, you lecture me on my alleged intellectual disabilities. I have Masters in Behavioral Science and a Bachelors Degree in Marketing. I am widely read in the arts, philosophy, economics, sociology, politics, and world literature.

I can’t comprehend your piece because it is incomprehensible. If you can’t see this, then it is your problem not mine. You are writing for a general audience, on a blog for God’s sake. It is your responsibility to ensure that what you write can be understood. What you have written may make sense in some bizarro parallel universe, but in the one we both inhabit it is nonsense, akin to the automatic writing of the surrealists.

Hold on a minute. That’s it. You are a Dadaist! That ‘explains’ everything…

Tony: No gloves are off from my side. I have however detected continual hostility from your side in more contexts than this one. And it’s usually the same theme if you will — that I am not ‘comprehensible’ and so forth.

Any response to the contrary brings forth a ‘hubris’ or ‘condescension’ charge from you.

First off you needn’t have been so defensive and described all your qualifications and interests. As a matter of fact I generally find this sort of ‘intro’ irrelevant to a discussion or debate. It is solely the quality of the debate I am interested in. Whether one is a literature prof or an astronaut really leaves me indifferent. The debate and how it’s argued doesn’t! I don’t consider an argument that I would otherwise find less valuable moreso because someone has impressive credentials!

Secondly I don’t believe in general/specialized dichotomies. Not that there isn’t specialized knowledge but we need not posit a ‘general reader’ who suspiciously resembles the lowest kind of intelligence! At least I don’t! I tend to operate with the assumption that people are willing to read carefully and put in some effort on their own as well. I prefer not to talk down to anyone (even if ironically you also leveled this charge at me) and consider the readers here perfectly capable of understanding things as long as they’re willing to do some work on their own also!

The record shows that everything I’ve written here has attracted many positive responses as well which means that clearly not everyone is on your side of ‘incomprehensibility’.

Lastly I have made no such pact of always playing to some hazy definition of the ‘general reader’. People who find the writings less acceptable for this reason can always ignore them. I will however not assume that people cannot read just because they don’t have specialized backgrounds.

Getting back to this piece I daresay that anyone who’s seen the film will be able to make minimal sense of what I’ve said. The irony is that Kaufmann is offering a challenging work. There is that Proust reference there which is not at all tangential to the film. But he doesn’t even give us the title. He just gives us the opening page. Anyone who has not read Proust would never get the reference! In Apocalypse Now there is that famous Ride of the Valkyries moment (a bit ironically used). If one discusses these movies and gets into these points presumably one alienates that ‘general reader’! But of course those films (and many others) contain those clues!

And how much can someone writing a piece explain? Do you expect me to write half a page on what Proust means and then get into what Kauffman means by that reference? This is not a set of annotations to the film! I come across professional reviews all the time where certain things are incomprehensible to me but I don’t blame it on the reviewer. And again I never called this piece a review. Never promised such. It is just a brief set of reflections. A response to the experience of watching this film. That’s all.

Look Kaleem, I am bored with all this, but will make one final effort.

You are happy to pontificate endlessly on your supposed intellectual superiority, but make zero effort to elucidate on the substance of the text that is the subject of the debate. This is ‘hubris’.

I agree credentials are largely irrelevant, but you implicitly said inter-alia of me “As readers we are not equally equipped to read all kinds of writing” and “In general greater exposure to all kinds of writing makes one less rigid in terms of one’s expectations”. This is ‘condescension’.

You thus forced me to defend myself, and I did so not unreasonably by referring to my educational attainments and wide reading. Again, you respond by denying your original argument, and entering into yet another round of pontificating using more of those wearisome exclamation points, for which you have such a penchant.

You blather about the reader needing to do some ‘work’, while you do none. Where are the arguments, references, and examples which support the empty assertions in your opening paragraph. Viz:

“Kaufmann’s own work is a messy, knotty, bracing reworking of Proustian space.”

“There are no magical madeleines here with coherently conjured up visions”

What pray tell, is ‘Proustian space’? What is a magical madeleine’? Very few have read Proust. It is incumbent on you to explain.

“There is only memory that is at once schizoid and anarchic. And it is ultimately a film about ‘impossibility’.”

How can ‘memory’ be ‘schizoid’ or ‘anarchic’ ?

“The impossibility of love, of art, of aging, even of death. Then there is the saddest truth of this film — the impossibility of loneliness”

Just how are all the irreducible realities of love, art, aging, and death impossible? How do you explain ‘loneliness’ a impossible to a lonely person?

Such immediate questions are certainly not addressed in the body of the piece, which contains only more waffle. Indeed you don’t want your readers to do any work, what you want them to do is swallow further grandiose assertions at face value:

“In Proust the self is constructed every single day to re-configure the always lost paradise.”

Who or what constructs the self if it is not the self, and who or what ‘re-configures’ the ‘always lost paradise’ – whatever that is?
“There are circles here, returns and beginnings anew.”

How is this statement connected to the previous statement? A circle does not have a beginning or an end…

“The self is the daily compromise memory allows. But the search is rather charming, always a little romantic, even perhaps a little fabular.”

What this statement actually means apart, again it is totally disconnected from the preceding two sentences.

“The ‘play’ of/in the world never quite defeats the quester even if there is finally a quasi-spiritual sense of repose”

Ditto – how is ‘play’ in conflict with the ‘quester’ (sic) – whever he/she is?

“Proust is a bit like Cervantes but Don Quixote ends somewhere; In Search of Lost Time always loops in on its finales.”

Ditto – how can you have a finale in a loop?

“In Kaufmann’s work however the time of life is only purgatorial, suspended between prologue and epilogue, always too late for the first and always too early for the second.”

Ditto – how can life be ‘suspended if it has a ‘prologue’ and an ‘epilogue’?

“It is perhaps simply a film about ghosts and their impossible presence. The only life here is one where shards of memory stand in for the ever elusive ‘whole’ of life. A work of art in effect always constructed in the mind like a stage set with movable props and changeable characters. Life will have been a hallucination… ”

Ditto. How can you talk of ghosts if they don’t exist? If life is an hallucination – who is having the hallucination – God?

“It is not a young person’s film. It’s lessons are too costly. But then youth, just like age, is not granted to everyone.”

Ditto – a Clayton’s conclusion that is plucked out of the blue and has no connection with what has gone before.

Finally, I have no personal animosity towards you – I don’t know you. There may be something in what you want to say, but I can’t see it. My hostility is directed at what you have written.

Tony: First off I would suggest that you NOT see this film. Because Kaufmann is not going to tell you what book that page is from even though it’s a significant image in the film and you might find him irritating!

You tend to set up a straw man. First you accuse me of condescension and then when I respond I am only confirming the structure. The same goes for ‘intellectual superiority’. You are throwing out these things at me!

On the ‘being equipped’ comment that has again little to do with condescension but it is something merely factual. The very fact that you are asking me questions about Proust obviously means that you are less equipped to understand some Kaufmann themes than many others who have some inkling of what Proust is about! When Sam writes reviews of operas he sees there is much that is not completely comprehensible to me because I am not as well versed in these matters as he is. It is then upto me to educate myself further. I can’t demand that Sam first give me a class on Verdi before he starts commenting on the opera in question!

It seems to me that your entire demand (in addition to being a little narcissistic.. why is what appears incomprehensible to you the same as a general matter? Why do you assume that everyone finds it the same? Why are you the quintessential ‘general reader’? I see positive comments here and in previous pieces.. how did those ‘general’ readers understand things?) is frankly a little absurd. Or do you demand completely explanations from all the reviewers you come across? Mine isn’t even a ‘review’!

I am afraid I cannot respond to your specific questions here because you are pretty much asking me to explain every sentence! It would take a long post to do so!

The hostility I find in you is not towards me personally but towards a kind of writing that you see with me (as you have yourself admitted). From the very first moment you have been less than pleased about it. This is fine. We all have our tastes and our expectations. But you cannot then hold such writing as a ‘negative’ more generally. However, this is exactly what you do. I then have to point out the obvious which is that there are issues of education and training and so on. But pat comes your response that I am ‘condescending’, that I am being ‘intellectually superior’, that I am ‘pontificating’ and what not. You are the ONLY person here who’s put forth these charges.

I have been in situations as a reader many times in life when various kinds of writing on all subjects has been challenging to me, or less than comprehensible, in all sorts of contexts. But I did not fault the authors! I identified these as areas where I needed to learn more assuming I had that level of interest. Similarly I have never set parameters in terms of what people should ‘write’ just because I tend to favor a certain kind of writing. It is not unreasonable to expect that others follow this principle. I think it is grossly unfair that you keep throwing out these names, when I respond you throw out some more. Anyway the only thing I can recommend is that you simply pass over my posts. There are not too many of those here so it should be easy enough!

I’m not sure I understand what Mr. Hasan is saying here either, but I don’t begrudge him his right to approach this difficult film with some probing (if cryptic) analysis. The fact that he’s even able to do this is certainly a plus.

Here is Roger Shattuck, one of Proust’s foremost interpreters (note how the word ‘synecdoche’ figures in this essay.. Kaufmann might well have read it.. anyone who really wants to read about Proust without necessarily reading him should begin with becket’s great essay ‘The Image of Proust’. Proust is easily along with Joyce one of the twentieth century’s greatest writers. Many consider the two to be among the greatest literary talents of all time):

“No single theory or approach will make Proust easily or quickly available to all inquiring minds. The very resistance of his work to simplification and analysis constitutes its most evident general characteristic. Beyond this feature, however, we discover endless contradictions in the Search. Walt Whitman lived at peace with the fact that he contradicted himself. He said that he contained multitudes. Proust asks the next question. How much of his multitudinous self can a person be or embody at one time? The first answer is plain common sense: it all depends. It depends on many things, from chance and volition to memory and forgetting. The second answer is categorical. No matter how we go about it, we cannot be all of ourselves all at once. Narrow light beams of perception and of recollection illuminate the present and past in vivid fragments. The clarity of these fragments is sometimes very great. They may even overlap and reinforce one another. However, to summon our entire self into simultaneous existence lies beyond our powers. we live by synecdoche, by cycles of being. More profoundly than any other novelist, Proust perceived this state of things and worked as an economist of the personality. In himself and in others he observed its fluctuations and partial realizations. Through habit and convention we may find security in “the immobility of the things around us.” Yet it affords only temporary refuge. We yield with excitement, apprehension, and a deeper sense of existence to the great wheeling motion of experience. On a single page Proust refers to that endless shifting process as both “the secret of the future” and “the darkness we can never penetrate.” He also has a word for it: our lot is “intermittence,” the only steady state we know.

As in life itself, the scope of action and reflection encountered in the Search exceeds the capacity of one mind to hold it all together at one time. Thus the novel embodies and manifests the principle of intermittence: to live means to perceive different and often conflicting aspects of reality. This iridescence never resolves itself completely into a unitive point of view. Accordingly, it is possible to project out of the Search itself a series of putative and intermittent authors. Precisely that has happened. The portraitist of an expiring society, the artist of romantic reminiscence, the narrator of the laminated `I,’ the classicist of formal structure — all these figures are to be found in Proust, approximately in that order of historical occurrence. All are present as discernible components of his vision and his creation. His principle of intermittence anticipates such veerings of critical emphasis. It is in the middle of a literary discussion that his Narrator observes, “On ne se realise que successivement.” It really means: one finds, not oneself, but a succession of selves. Similarly, Proust’s work is still going on in our gradual discovery of it.”

“As with his earlier scripts, “Synecdoche” is organized around a grand Borgesian conceit.”

The author never explains later on in the review what a ‘Borgesian conceit’ is. Hence one unfamiliar with Borges would not know what was being referred to!

Incidentally there are other references here from the obvious Death of a Salesman staging to someone reading the Trial. The framework though is still more Proustian than anything else in my view though at least two reviewers have made a convincing case for Borges.

Kaleem, I don’t doubt that you have something to say, but you need to express it more clearly.

You keep building layers of complexity, without any concern for helping the reader navigate. Almost no-one has read Proust, and now you add Borges, Miller, and Kafka to the mix.

Let me have a stab at it off the top of my head, remembering I have not seen the film:

Kaufman like Proust, sees individual being as fragmentary. The self or consciousness are only fluid and fragmentary memories that are never fixed and are continually reconfigured in each waking moment as in our dreams. Our lives have only a tenuous grasp on physical reality, which is merely a construct imposed on an ephemeral existence. Time is such a construct, with memory not only a relic of the past but integral to the fabric of the eternal present and the unknowable future. Life is a waking dream. As Proust wrote:

“These shifting and confused gusts of memory never lasted for more than a few seconds; it often happened that, in my spell of uncertainty as to where I was, I did not distinguish the successive theories of which that uncertainty was composed any more than, when we watch a horse running, we isolate the successive positions of its body as they appear upon a bioscope. But I had seen first one and then another of the rooms in which I had slept during my life, and in the end I would revisit them all in the long course of my waking dream.. ”

I would in riposte say that the nihilism of Proust and Kaufman lies in unreality, in a refusal to engage with life and ultimately, and in a perverse withdrawal from reality. Time is a construct yes, but quantum physics tells us that sub-atomic particles move backwards and forwards in time, and so does memory: the soul of man as a metaphysical manifestation or a spiritual truth is outside time and memory. As Jesus said, we need to be as children to enter the kingdom. Kaufman sees life through a darkly filtered Proustian mantel – he needs to leave the sound stage with its props and shibboleths, and get himself to park and watch the children play

Tony: I would disagree. I think Proust and Kaufmann are both very far from being nihilists. my favorite critic, Harold Bloom, detects a kind of ‘Eastern wisdom’ in Proust and I find the remark suggestive. There are distinctly ‘Eastern’ tropes running through Proust. But in a Western sense I don’t detect any nihilism in him. For Proust memory contains an element of illusion partly because it is linked to the sensory world but also because it is linked to ‘desire’ (Proust is one of the great psychologists). I suspect Kaufmann wouldn’t disagree. Also remember in that Pauline thought you reference we now “see through a glass darkly” but in another more authentic moment it will all be clear. In other words in the world as we have it there is usually failure of vision.

Art in Synecdoche is what blocks and enables vision at one and the same time.

You just keep the second-hand sophisms coming. For example, you say “Also remember in that Pauline thought you reference we now ‘see through a glass darkly’ but in another more authentic moment it will all be clear”. Nothing at all is clear – you say nothing about the other more authentic moment.

Can’t you write a paragraph that is simply a statement of what you think and argue it directly without recourse to what someone else has said?

Bobby: Who is Shaddock? What is his theory? Or am I telepathically challenged?

Russell: Just once, you might consider contributing one original thought. Or is that too hard? Btw, upper case is tres passe…

I have stayed out of this discourse up to now simply because I have always found arguing with Kaleem about as beneficial as having my teeth extracted through my arse.

The original piece, as it was, was fine, merely thoughts on a movie I have not yet seen and thus cannot comment on. But the comments flying back here from him have been so stratospheric that they could only qualify as interminable bollocks that could only alienate readers. I once in jest told Kaleem to climb to the top of the Empire State Building to get a clearer view of reality. I have long since realised the error in that statement, for Kaleem would have to not so much climb as descend from whichever cumulonimbus he happened to be terrorising the surviving Olympians from. No wonder they accepted being carted off to Malpertuis.

Kaleem has the wonderful ability to talk down to people such as here…

Lastly I have made no such pact of always playing to some hazy definition of the ‘general reader’. People who find the writings less acceptable for this reason can always ignore them. I will however not assume that people cannot read just because they don’t have specialized backgrounds.

It basically means, in layman’s terms; “I don’t care if people don’t understand my pieces, they are below my concern. I am addressing the Gods”. Meanwhile Stephen Hawking has just left the blog in search of paracetamol. Yet there is no point going further there, as, if I had a pound for every time I have been told by Mr Hasan “once again, Allan, you completely fail to comprehend my meaning” and in doing so he fails to comprehend mine, I’d be rich enough to buy out Bill Gates. If he were a movie character, he’d be Michael Palin’s Boring Prophet from Life of Brian…”it is written in the book of Kaleem…” To keep the Python theme, imagine him in the All England Summarising Proust Competition. No chance!

Tony, Kaleem will never write a review as such, that’s simply too bourgeoise. He will instead just write pieces as they drift from the ether of his Einstein-dwarfing mind. Structure is for idiots, clarity the refuge of the simpleton. Ask him to write a piece on Natural Born Killers and he’d bring Sophocles into it. It’s not helped by his immediately referring to anything to do with cinema as not worthy to lick the boots of the masterpieces of other art forms. When he’s condescending towards the medium itself he cannot help but be condescending towards his readers, and thus feels the necessity to bring a reference from some other ‘worthy’ art form into the piece. When he even deigns to talk about a film, he’s like Miss Crawley in Vanity Fair being carried down on cushions from the beach to the sea, dithering over whether she wants to get her feet wet in such unworthy waters. The problem is then exacerbated by my friend Sam’s press ganging of his friends and family to write nice things about Kaleem to keep him on side and happy merely to inflate his already Montgolfier balloon sized ego and save him the hassle of getting off his fence and speaking what he thinks rather than sycophancy dictates. You summed it up perfectly when you said…

It would be interesting if one of the sages who have nodded so wistfully here actually said something meaningful to demonstrate that they have penetrated this particular thicket.

Russell – someone once told you you were funny. The man is now on the FBI’s most wanted list. Depart home where your village is forming a posse to search for its idiot.

I would have said nothing, but won’t leave Tony alone to deal with the Hasan acolytes who believe that, if they can’t understand what the heck he’s saying, it must be genius. Put it this way, if Charlie Kaufman wrote Being Kaleem Hasan, it would carry a government health warning. THIS FILM MIGHT SERIOUSLY DAMAGE YOUR SANITY. Aspirin would be provided at the box office kiosk.

I don’t know Kaleem Hasan personally, and to be honest I am not siding with anyone in this running battle. But I won’t deny that his theories interest me. Mr. Fish, I am not encouraging anything at this site other than enlightenment to assist my moviegoing. If I think that Mr. Hasan has something to bring to the table (which I think he does) I will ask for clarification. His most recent posting was quite comprehensive and ‘enlightening.’ If the end result of differences here results in a net gain for me or anyone else here, I am satisfied.

What I find more than a little amusing here is the constant theme in your responses that anything you do not understand is by that very fact ‘illegitimate’ as writing for a ‘general reader’! Ironically I have not been arrogant. You have! How? I am not ‘talking down’ to anyone here. I am assuming that people will be willing to read carefully but even if they don’t find something completely comprehensible they will either debate things or respect the effort being made. It’s fair to say this has happened 99% of the time. There are exceptions like yourself (you conveniently pass over this crucial point every single time!). On the other hand you are constantly setting yourself up as the standard and you are completely unaware of this problem!

Again you have shown a certain hostility towards a certain kind of writing. But let’s also be honest. I have written three pieces on this site. The first one on Alexander and then the next one on Ace in a Hole went into great detail. You had problems there too but I laid things out.

This is an elliptical piece by its very nature. It’s meant to be that way. Had I wanted to write the kind of ‘explicative’ piece on this film that I did on Ace in the Hole (where I explained the Platonic allegory in detail including even describing the original story) I would have done so. I think an elementary contact with certain kinds of writing would have made one aware of the fact that this writing aims to be something other than what one expects it to be.

Then we get to the second point. Assuming one recognizes that this is a different sort of piece one nonetheless wants to block off such writing on this blog in the service of some imagined ‘general reader’ (who will only have been oneself!). So two moves here. Let’s be clear.

There are ethical questions as well. First off one can exchange names. In every single response of yours there is an unflattering comment. I know you have nothing against me personally because as you say you do not know me. Well why then do you indulge in these ad hominem attacks? For every time you implied I was an ivory tower intellectual looking down on the general reader I could respond and say you were a Philistine? Would that help?

I have been more than happy to engage with any and everyone here. I think I have always been polite in my responses. You are now at the point of nitpicking just for the heck of it. The question you asked about the Pauline reference here is fairly obvious. A more ‘authentic’ moment is a moment of vision. I was hoping you’d be a better Christian than myself and remember the complete quote!

The other question that emerges is: why can’t you ignore this stuff? Could it be that there is something in it that unnerves you? I won’t psychoanalyze more here.

David: Thanks very much for your comment. It’s not at all taking sides. All you’re suggesting is that people be allowed to have their say. Some will find it interesting, some won’t. Some will consider it useful, others useless. But evidently this democratic idea does not appeal to everyone. We’re supposed to pass the imagined general reader test before we comment.

By Tony’s standards you are not the ‘general reader’ either. How else would you find anything I wrote here “enlightening”?! Of course there are others who were either appreciative of what I said or were at the very least appreciative of the effort even if they couldn’t completely come to terms with it. This is a point Tony chooses to ignore again and again. There is only one ‘general reader’ and his name is Tony.

Allan: First off your long polemical and reasonably nasty response here is a good piece of writing. Alas I am too much the objective critic not to appreciate this fact!

Never let it be said that you ever let up on an opportunity to rip me!

Dare I call you a little hypocritical? My piece on Ace in the Hole was called “one for the ages” by you. And this is not the first time you’ve had such praise for it. I guess bringing Plato in is alright as long as it’s done to uphold one of your very favorite films! I can bet anything that had I used exactly the same analogy to be less kind about the film you would have reacted very angrily! Then again, perhaps Plato is alright, Sophocles isn’t.

What’s really at the root of these objections (yours and Tony’s)? Do I provoke an anxiety? Does my way of discussing cinema prove to be too much of a subversion to established order in this regard? Why this ‘policing’? Everyone must write a certain way or we’ll call them names! Never mind if there are a 1001 such studies on cinema, never mind if the very nature of these films invites such discussion (I didn’t quote Borges and Kafka and Miller and Proust, Kaufmann did!), it must not be done here. This is the way it is with you. Tony chooses a different tack where he is only with you half the time, the rest of the time he just happens not to understand anything and then can call me an obscurantist. Eventually you decide that an additional name is not a bad thing so you add this to your repertoire as well!

We are not really having a discussion. Basically I write things and you indulge in these kinds of responses. Unless of course it’s Ace in the Hole. Then you’re quite happy to disagree with yourself on me!

All kinds of things thrown in for good measure. I am condescending towards cinema. I am condescending towards those who view cinema. So on and so forth. I could suggest that you have a complex about certain things but I shall let this pass. I don’t want to personalize things too much. But again a statement in very bad faith. I have the largest collection of junk Hollywood titles around and you know this. Not sure how one owns the likes of the director’s cut on Commando and nonetheless condescends towards those who love cinema. Then there is other stuff that you bring in without giving others any sense of background. The idea that I find cinema inferior to other art forms. yes, I do not believe the cinema has had a Bach or a Shakespeare or a Raphael. Artists of that eminence for the medium. Perhaps others would like to disagree. Perhaps you think Murnau is the equal of these others. I don’t. I don’t believe cinema has had an artist as preeminent as those in other art forms. I believe I have also called cinema the most influential art form since its inception even if I have questioned whether this form has nonetheless has produced works on average to compete with those others.

All these are serious questions and involve a great deal of thought in every sense. People can disagree with these assertions but the idea that a person like myself who breathes cinema is somehow on this secret project to deconstruct the medium in favor of other art forms is more than a little preposterous. I could respond in other ways to this as well but it would once again be personalizing things and it wouldn’t be appropriate. Unlike yourself I make a distinction between what I discuss with you on private emails and on a blog.

It is very easy to ridicule without engaging. You would have been on the side of those who convicted Socrates, not on his! This is exactly the kind of unthinking, uncritical, demonizing process whereby anyone and anything can be completely delegitimized. One never has to prove anything. One never has to debate anything. One just indulges in name-calling!

Your response is tasteless at one level but nonetheless well written. I feel like a bit of a masochist here suggesting that I actually enjoyed reading it even if so much of it was ad hominem. Unfortunately for myself ‘pettiness’ was never one of my faults. Nor one of holding out on credit where such is due. I of course make up for what I think are virtues with countless other vices, many on display here..

Allan, that comment you made insinuating that I am enlisting ‘family and friends’ to back up Kaleem (or anyone else for that matter) is quite a fantasy. Bobby Mccartney, a person you know well, has commented on dozens and dozens of your own pieces with complimentary and flattering summary judgements. He has given you far more effusive praise than he has done for Kaleem, who has only written three pieces here!!!
Bobby has personally met both you and Kaleem and he likes both of you. And he has praised both of you, with you getting a great edge.
David Noack has come to the site to voice his own opinions and on a few occasions has openly opposed me and taken me to task for my positions. He is quite the opposite from a synchophant. I have not discussed anything on this thread and have let the chips fall as they may.
I fully understand why Tony feels the way he does, and I understand Kaleem’s position too. I am not taking sides and I am NOT encouraging anyone to jump in either way. As you know these same people have been making contributions day in and day out here.

OK, firstly, David, there was no attack on you, it was a light-hearted comment.

Now, Kaleem. I have tried to stay out of this argument and have avoided commenting up till today. The problem is that Sam’s friends were coming out, prodded or not, and applauding you but refusing to admit that there were problems. Tony was thus left to argue the toss alone. But if I went overboard what was said needed saying. Tony is not the only person who agrees with me that you can be extremely patronising and condescending and aloof. Now, this may just be in writing, not in person, and is no comment on you as a person. But the fact remains that your writing is a problem. It’s superb, it’s brilliant in places, but the problems start when you start to explain yourself. The original piece as written was fine, I myself have made parallels – if never gone in the same detail – with other sources. Yet when asked a question, you do often politically avoid it – no wonder you’re so fascinated with Obama and politics, you missed your vocation, and that is not meant in a bad way.

Condescension and patronisation in general makes people upset. It’s the same way people get upset with politicians being allowed to avoid the question in TV interviews. Not all, but some, and especially those who may be insecure about their abilities or lack of them – a lot of people comes to blogs to find out how to write, how to have a passion for a subject, and in being so high in the clouds, they’re being sent away. This is not so true of the Italian American brigades of Fairview as they are, by their very nature, open to flattery. I’m of Anglo-Saxon stock. Tony is from Australia, and though of Italian stock, Australia itself, like the UK, is not known for its sycophancy, but for straight talking and not taking kindly to being talked down to. Whether you mean to do it or not, you do do it. And it’s frustrating, because in the flesh you’re probably quite the opposite. Likewise, not having your points addressed, but merely told “again you fail to understand” is further patronisation which will get people’s goat up as it’s got mine up more times than I care to remember. The other people who have found your comments – not the pieces, the comments – impenetrable are my film friends/contacts in the UK, one of whom is a professor at a South England University.

I don’t expect you to write like me, you’re too intelligent for that, and again that’s not meant in a bad way, but there must be a little levity if using such seriously intellectual arguments. And, more importantly, clarity and succinctness. By dragging in other cross references people may never have heard of you’re trying to lift someone’s inability to peer through the text by taking their contact lenses away and blindfolding them and asking them to sink or swim.

Sam is an eternal diplomat. I realise the only reason he tells me exactly what he thinks as he wouldn’t to most is because we can say such things to each other, however, sometimes a little criticism is necessary for the good. I have told him that his eternally complimenting people has a negative effect in that when something comes along, some comment, piece or whatever, that truly IS outstanding, no-one will pay heed to Sam’s eulogy as he does it to everyone. The eulogy, like the piece, needs to be out of place and outstanding. Likewise, in refusing to make constructive criticism but just nodding the head and saying “yes sir, no sir, three bags full, sir”, to whosoever, it’s being counter-productive. He would say as he did here…

I fully understand why Tony feels the way he does, and I understand Kaleem’s position too.

He’s a fence sitter, I love him for it, but you can’t agree with two people in an argument, Sam.

As for the charge of hypocrisy, your piece was excellent on Plato, but then again, I did understand what you were talking about. I read Proust years ago, but I must admit I was with Tony when thinking about what a Proustian Space might be. My comments of praise were about the piece. I did not comment about the later comments where much of the problem stemmed from. I left that be.

Allan, the same “friends” that you claim “came out prodding and praising” Kaleem Hasan’s essay are the very same people (who are the heart and soul of this site) who have praised YOUR pieces, Tony’s pieces, and my pieces.

They have no preferece for anybody, let’s get that point straight. To be honest, as you have written maybe 150 pieces at this site and Kaleem 3, I would say you are by far on the better end of the stick so to speak when it comes to comments of praise, not that you don’t deserve them. You do.

As to the charge of being a “fence sitter” I will continue to be so. We have a wonderful, talented group of people here–sometimes volatile–but wonderful nonetheless. I do not want to lose anybody, not a single person. Still in all thruthfulness I see both sides.

Allan: I take you long comment here to be a sincere one. I thank you for it. I disagree with very many points but since I’ve addressed many of these same things here I don’t think there’s a point in doing so all over again or offering counter-examples.

Though I should say that being a professor does not exactly qualify one to comprehend everything even in one’s own field. Half the professors trained in philosophy in America and the UK (and I am being conservative here) consider most contemporary continental thinkers to be either hopelessly obscurantist or ‘spouters’ of nonsense!

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Wonders in the Dark is a blog dedicated to the arts, especially film, theatre and music. An open forum is highly encouraged, as the site proctors are usually ready and able to engage with ongoing conversation.